Did you know that snails are the most prolific livestock animal producing more than 150 eggs at a time in one clutch? Its also the livestock that requires less stress in breeding them. You can buy a baby snail for less than N30 and make more than N200 as profit on such snail when it reaches table size.

The prolific aspect is that you can decide to breed 4 snails and before a year runs out you will have more than a thousand snails in your snail farm.
So let me take you into the commercial and medicinal/ nutritional value of snails.

Introduction to Snail Farming:

Snails are derived from the wild life environment and are used as food, feed or source of revenue in given parts of the world. Usually unknown to animal production specialists and often officially ignored also by the livestock services of their home areas even though their meat may be appreciated and command a higher price than more conventional animals.

Snails are invertebrates with soft bodies covered with hard carcareous shells. More also snails are hermaphrodites i.e. they are capable of reproducing on their own without any form of mating with a female or male gamete.
Snails are often found lying around in bushes across West Africa, even till recent days but there as been significant change in finding them now lying in bushes due to heavy deforestation. We can easily find them in bushes during the wet season, normally from April-September in large quantities.

Now some farmers found it as a lucrative livestock and they adopted it and started rearing them. This process is known as “Heliculture”.
Snails do not require much money in feeding them as their food is naturally available in form of green leaves and some fruits.

Nutritional/Medicinal Value of Snail:

Snail meat is high in protein than that of pig, poultry, fish cattle, sheep and swine. Iron content (45-59mg/kg), low in fat (0.05-0.08). and contains almost all the amino acids needed for human nutrition. Recent studies indicated that the glandular substances from edible snails cause agglutination of some of certain bacteria, which could be of value against a variety of ailments. You can read more on the medicinal value of snail in this ebook and how it can be used to combat some body illness of human including whooping cough, anemia.

Commercial Value of Snail:

Consumption of snail globally:
There is a flourishing international trade of snails in Europe and North America. In France the annual requirement is about 5million kg; 60% of which is imported. The estimated annual consumption in Italy is 306million snails. In West Africa snail meat has traditionally been a major ingredient in the diet of people living in the Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon.

In spite of the considerable external and demand, commercial snail farms such as those in Europe, South-East Asia and the Americas do not exist in West Africa. Here in West Africa snails are gathered from the forest.

Demand for snail meat in Nigeria:

Snail farming is one of the most lucrative farming Venture anyone can embark on in Nigeria. It is far easier than any other animal rearing business and twice more profitable too.
Snails are real source of wealth and the great thing about snail is that, its in high demand. If you have good quality of snails, hotel and eateries will literally queue on door for it because it is used for making very high priced nutritious delicacies.

Sadly, Nigerians are inclined to go into business that carry so much noise and bells, thereby neglecting such lucrative area of business like snail farming; in Nigeria which can as well be exported to international countries and earn huge foreign currencies.

Read the complete article here http://wealthmeans..com/2013/06/wealth-in-snail-farming-business.html